Full-Review

Reviewed by: Rajesh Chadha, Senior Fellow, National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India
Review posted 11 October 2006
Review No. 89

CD-ROM Information

Content: TradeCAN is a useful set of two CD-ROMs configured to analyze international, national, and regional competitiveness in commodities and manufactured exports. It allows users to calculate market shares for each three or four digit Standard International Trade Classification (STIC) export for 1985-2002 and record changes in market share and structure.
Publication Date: 1 January 2006
Audience: TradeCAN is a research tool for analyzing competitiveness of countries in merchandise trade. It is a useful tool for academic research as well as policy perspective. The likely users include students, academic researchers, government departments including the ministries of finance, commerce, trade and external affairs, trade negotiators both at multilateral level within the World Trade Organization and at bilateral and multilateral levels, the chambers of commerce and industry, and individual exporters and importers.
Producer: World Bank
Size: 2 CD-ROMs 1104MB
Price: US$395/ Developing country discounts available.
Manual needed: A hard copy "Users Guide" is included. It is also available in electronic format once the program has been installed. An "Exercises Guide" is available electronically. Both are required to effectively use the CD-ROMs.
How to order:

Order online.*

View developing country discounts.*

Order by mail:
The World Bank
1818 H Street NW, Washington D.C., 20433
U.S.A

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Full-Review

Content Overview

TradeCAN is a useful set of two CD-ROMs configured to analyze international, national, and regional competitiveness in commodities and manufactured exports. TradeCAN uses International Trade Classification Revision-2 (SITC Rev-2). SITC (Rev-2) has 10 one-digit sections disaggregated into two-digit divisions. Further breakdown includes 233 three-digit groups and 786 four-digit sub-groups. While the data up to three-digit details are provided in CD-ROM 1, the data at four-digit level are contained in CD-ROM 2.

The accompanying Users Guide helps in installing the CD-ROMs as well as familiarizing users with the materials. Once installed it automatically creates a folder "Tradecan22" in the program files and also an icon "CAN: TradeCAN-2005" on the desktop. The folder "Tradecan22" contains a sub-folder "Exercises" with a hands-on Exercises Guide (PDF file). It provides users with nine step-by-step instructional exercises.

The nine exercises are structured in the following format:

• Exercise 1 is on basic instructions and introduces users to the operation of various buttons that appear on the TradeCAN work-file screen. The details of how to work with the data are also provided using graphics;
• Exercise 2 introduces the use of four-digit SITC data along with various report formats that can be generated on market share, percentage of exports, specialization, and percentage of imports over two or more different points in time. The reports can be saved to spreadsheet files;
• Exercise 3 introduces the comparison of a country's or region's export performance vis-à-vis that of a rival country/region;
• Exercise 4 trains users on how to sort rival countries for exports of a specific commodity;
• Exercise 5 demonstrates how to use ordering options for the most important four-digit export commodity in a particular year or the fastest growing export commodity over a period/sub-period during 1985-2002;
• Exercise 6 demonstrates how user-defined exporting country groups can be generated over and above the ones pre-defined in the CD-ROMs;
• Exercise 7 shows how to construct, print, and save various types of advanced report formats;
• Exercise 8 is a tutorial in how to construct a competitive matrix providing gains/losses on the vertical axis and stagnant/dynamic commodities on the horizontal axis; and
• Exercise 9 is an example of interpreting the competitive analysis using specialization on the vertical axis.

Users have to provide details on four mandatory parameters: "import market", "exporter country/region", "traded commodity", and "time period". This information is enough to process users' queries. The "import market" has to be a group of countries. It may be the world as a whole or included in industrialized countries or developing countries. It can also be a sub-group from among three sub-groups for each of the two groups of countries. The industrialized countries are divided into three sub-groups: North America, Western Europe, and Other Industrialized Countries. The developing countries also have three sub-groups, Africa, Developing Asia, and Developing America. The exporter country/region can either be a country or a group of countries. Various groups of exporting countries are pre-defined in TradeCAN with an option of re-arranging exporting countries into user-defined regions. There is also an option of choosing a rival exporter country/region to compare the relative performance. The traded commodity can be chosen at levels ranging from one-digit to four-digit. Users can perform comparative analysis at two or more different points of time between 1985 and 2002. More elaborate queries can be handled through using options under "filters", "matrix", and "report".

The "query report" can be generated and sorted according to any of the five CAN variables: "market share", "percentage of exports", "specialization", "percentage of imports", and "market share relative to a rival". The results may be arranged in terms of final year values or in terms of percentage variation between the base and the final years.

The core of TradeCAN refers to a matrix aimed at analyzing the quality of a country's position on world markets. It distinguishes four types of competitive situations based on comparing the changes in percentage of imports on the one hand, and export performance measured in terms of market share or percentage of exports or specialization on the other. Commodities whose percentage of imports goes up in the reporting regions are "dynamic commodities", while those with declining percentage of imports are "stagnant commodities". The dynamic commodities with increasing export performance are the "rising stars", and the ones with decreasing export performance are the "missed opportunities". Stagnant commodities with increasing export performance are "declining stars" while those with decreasing export performance are "retreats". The "market share relative to the rival" is also reported in case a rival exporting country/region has also been chosen.

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Content Comments

TradeCAN is a useful research tool for users wanting to analyze the competitiveness of countries in merchandise trade because it can quickly generate powerful analytical reports. The data is provided as three year moving averages thus smoothening sharp cyclical fluctuations and emphasizing structural changes relatively distinctly. However, there are some major limitations. The database is in terms of SITC (Rev-2) whereas most trade negotiations are generally based on the Harmonized System.* Further, SITC (Rev-3) is the currently used norm and was adopted in 1988. It is also not clear why the data on imports has not been provided after 2002. The second major problem relates to the near impossibility of bilateral trade analysis between two countries. While the exporter can be chosen as a single country, the importer has to be a group of either industrialized or developing countries.

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User-Friendliness and Navigability

The CD-ROMs are easy to install. They do not require an internet connection. They come with a detailed Users Guide that is easy to understand. Also included is a well explained Exercises Guide that helps users maximize the materials. The CD-ROMs are easy to navigate, giving the user enough flexibility to start and stop as needed.

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Interactive Facilities

The data manipulation facility allows users to analyze the competitiveness of exports of a country/region to some of the pre-defined country groupings in the CD-ROMs. It does this for export commodities under the SITC trade classification (one-digit to four-digit). When the input data has been configured, it provides market share, percentage of exports, specialization, percentage of imports, and market share relative to a rival using various report formats.

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Distribution

TradeCAN 2005 is available for US$395 from the World Bank. It is available at a discounted rate to people from developing countries. Please refer to the "How to Order" section above.

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Sustainability

Trade data changes often. Although this was published in January 2006, the latest data on it is available only until 2002. It needs annual updating to remain a useful policy analytical tool.

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